Page 2 of A Touch of Royalty
And on the front of the envelope was her name.
“The queen summons you.” The page couldn’t have been more than ten. “The matter is urgent, Healer. You are bidden to the palace straight away.”
“I will come immediately.” Emryn nodded to the head healer, who smiled at her.
There was a carriage waiting for them at the bottom of the steps to the temple and it was the work of a moment for her and the page to bundle themselves into it.
Emryn had only been in this carriage once before. When the queen had honored her work and skill during the last plague.She had been better dressed then. This time she was going to the palace in her plain grey robes.
But, she assumed, that the queen had summoned her for an illness, not a vanity recognition.
And the closer that the carriage got to the palace, the more Emryn could sense it in the air.
It was wrong, deeply and truly wrong in the same places that she was wrong, and that was strange in the extreme.
The carriage pulled to a halt and Emryn was the first one down, utterly ignoring the footman’s hand as he offered her help. The feeling was a miasma in the air, and Emryn picked up the hem of her drab grey robe and dashed toward the palace.
She ignored the guards stationed at the entrance and they either remembered her, or they were too shocked by her headlong dash to stop her.
She ran headfirst into the queen’s secretary, almost knocking the man off his feet. The older man gripped her arm and used it to steady himself. But Emryn wasn’t going to wait for the platitudes, or the ceremony. She had a patient to see to.
2
ILLNESS
Cas had no idea what to expect. His mother had been in to see him that day, telling him that she’d called in a healer to see to him. Another one, over and above the palace healers and the holy sisters that had poked and prodded him to within an inch of his life, only for them to tell his mother there was nothing that could be done for him.
So what was one more healer going to do? But he didn’t want to reject the healer out of hand, that would distress his mother and him being sick was doing that quite well enough.
At this point, and he’d had this from his palace spies, his mother’s council was pressuring her to wed again so that when Cas died,she would have another heir in the wings.
Not that his mother would listen to them. Even though she likely should listen to them. If none of the healers could do anything for him, it was likely that he was going to die.
Cas jumped as his door opened, revealing, well, she was dressed like a healer, but didn’t look at him like a healer should look at their prince. There was no deference in those eyes, no recognition, and why was there white fire curling around her hands?
He could have called his guards, except they were already there. Standing at the back of the healer. In their wake, was his mother, looking at him with hope and no little bit of desperation in her eyes.
“Mother?” Cas struggled to rise as the healer marched to his bedside and looked at him. Cas looked back, meeting the healer’s eyes and wincing. There was bright flame spilling from her eyes, spiraling around her and concentrating itself in her hands.
”Look into my eyes.,” she said in a low voice. “Let me see you.”
Cas felt himself blush. There was a note in the healer’s voice that said she was used to being listened to. So he listened. It’s not as though this healer would be able to do anything different than the healers in the past had done.
She reached out, gripping his chin and stared him directly in the eyes. The feeling was strange in the extreme.Most healing felt like spiders crawling around on your insides. This was far different and no little bit frightening.
The flame that surrounded her was inside him, but rather than char him to ash, it was more like one of his hunting dogs spiraling around inside him, seeking something that he didn’t know the shape of.
But this healer seemed to know precisely what she was looking for. The flames dragged a part of his mind along, and he was treated to a scan of what his insides looked like. He was pretty certain that they shouldn’t look like that.
And then they didn’t. The damage vanishing as he watched. It mended under the fire, as though it was being removed, restored, and changed under the flame.
And then the fire released him and he reached out just in time to catch the healer as she dropped bonelessly toward the floor. Cas cradled her, trying to figure out how he was feeling.
“My son?” His mother walked further into the room.
Cas nodded. “She did something, Mother,” he replied, still holding the healer. “I cannot tell you what, only that she restored me.”
”I should have sent for her sooner.” His mother looked down at the healer. “I honored her with my own hands for saving the city three years gone. She is the first one I should have had to look at you.”
